But dammit, man, be civilized about it.
Damian let go of her wrist, took a breath and began again.
“Miss Bennett. Laurel. I know we got off to a poor start—”
“You’re wrong. We didn’t get off to any start. You’re playing cat-and-mouse games but as far as I’m concerned, we never even met.”
“Well, we can remedy that. Have dinner with me this evening.”
“I’m busy.”
“Tomorrow night, then.”
“Still busy. And, before you ask, I’m busy for the foreseeable future.”
He laughed, and her eyes flashed with indignation.
“Did I say something funny, Mr. Skouras?”
“It’s Damian. And I was only wondering which of us is pretending what?”
“Which of us...” Color flew into her face. “My God, what an insufferable ego you must have! Do you think this is a game? That I’m playing hard to get?”
He leaned back against the edge of the photographer’s worktable, his jacket open and his hands tucked into the pockets of his trousers.
“The thought crossed my mind, yes.”
“Listen here, Mr. Skouras...”
“Damian.”
“Mr. Skouras.” Laurel’s eyes narrowed. “Let me put this in words so simple even you’ll understand. One, I do not like you. Two, I do not like you. And three, I am not interested in lunch. Or dinner. Or anything else.”
“Too many men already on the string?”
God, she itched to slap that smug little smile from his face!
“Yes,” she said, “exactly. I’ve got them lined up for mornings, afternoons and evenings, and there’re even a couple of special ones I manage to tuck in at teatime. So as you can see, I’ve no time at all for you in my schedule.”
He was laughing openly now, amusement glinting in his eyes, and it was driving her over the edge. She would slug him, any second, or punch him in the very center of that oh-so-masculine chest...
Or throw her arms around his neck, drag his head down to hers and kiss him until he swung her into his arms and carried her off into the shadows that rimmed the lighted set...
“Laurel?” Damian said, and their eyes met.
He knew. She could see it in the way he was looking at her. He’d stopped laughing and he knew what she’d thought, what she’d almost done.
“No,” she said, and she swung away blindly. She heard him call her name but she didn’t turn back, didn’t pause.
Moving by instinct, impelled by fear not of Damian but of herself, she ran to the dressing room, flung open the door and then slammed it behind her. She fell back against it and stood trembling, with her heart thudding in her chest.
Outside, in the studio, Damian stood staring at the closed door. His entire body was tense; he could feel the blood pounding through his veins.
She’d been so angry at him. Furious, even more so because he’d been teasing her and she’d known it. And then, all at once, everything had changed. He’d seen the shock of sudden awareness etch into her lovely face and he’d understood it, felt it burn like flame straight into the marrow of his bones.
She’d run not from him but from herself. All he had to do was walk the few feet to the door that sheltered her, open it and take her in his arms. One touch, and she would shatter.
He would have her, and this insanity would be over.
Or would it?
He took a long, ragged breath. She was interesting, this Laurel Bennett, and not only because of the fire that raged under that cool exterior. Other things about her were almost as intriguing. Her ability to play her part in what was quickly becoming a complex game fascinated him, as did her determination to deny what was so obviously happening between them. She was an enigma. A challenge.
Damian smiled tightly. He had not confronted either in a very long time. It was part of the price he’d paid for success.
Perhaps he’d been wrong in thinking that he could get her out of his system by taking her to bed for a long night of passion. Laurel Bennett might prove a diversion that could please him for some time. And he sensed instinctively that, unlike Gabriella, she would not want nor ask for more.
The thought brought another smile to his lips. The women’s libbers would hang him from his toes, maybe from a more sensitive part of his anatomy, and burn him in effigy if they ever heard him make such a cool appraisal of a woman, but they’d have been wrong.
He was no chauvinist, he was merely a man accustomed to making intelligent assessments. Laurel was a sophisticated woman who’d had many lovers. Even if Gabriella hadn’t told him so, one look at her would have confirmed it. A brief, intense affair would give pleasure to them both.
He would go about this differently, then. He would have her, but not just once and not in a grimy loft. Damian ran his hands through his hair, straightened his tie and then made his way briskly out to the street.
CHAPTER FOUR
LAUREL’S APARTMENT took up the second floor of a converted town house on the upper east side of Manhattan. The rooms were sun-filled and pleasant, and the building itself was handsome and well located.
But it was an old building, and sometimes the plumbing was a problem. The landlord kept promising repairs but the handful of tenants figured he was almost as ancient as the plumbing. None of them had the heart to keep after him, especially when it turned out that Grey Morgan, the hunky soap star in apartment 3G, had been a plumber’s apprentice back in the days when he’d still been known as George Mogenovitch of Brooklyn.
His pretty dancer wife, Susie, had turned into a close friend, but she was another in what Laurel thought of as a legion of inveterate matchmakers. At least she had learned to read the signs. When Susie made spaghetti and invited her to supper, she accepted happily. When the invitation was for Beef Stroganoff and a good bottle of wine, it was wise to plead an excuse.
Laurel smiled to herself. Susie and George were the most warmhearted people imaginable, which explained why she was sitting on the closed lid of the toilet in her bathroom with a bunch of tools in her lap while George stood in her bathtub and tried to figure out why no water at all was coming out of the shower.
“Sorry it’s taking me so long,” he said, grunting as he worked a wrench around a fitting. “But I think I’ve almost got it.”
“Hey,” Laurel said, “don’t apologize. I’m just grateful you’re willing to bother.”
George flicked back his blond mane and shot her a grin.
“Susie wouldn’t have it any other way,” he said. “She figures it keeps me humble.”
Laurel smiled. “Clever Susie.”
Not that George needed to be kept humble. He was a nice guy. Success hadn’t gone to his head the way it did with some men. Hand them some good looks, some money, fame and fortune, and what did you get?
A man like Damian Skouras, that’s what. Laurel’s mouth thinned. Or like Kirk Soames. What was it about her that attracted such superficial, self-centered bastards?
Of course, she hadn’t seen it that way, not at first. She was a woman accustomed to making her own way in the world; she’d learned early on that many men were threatened by her fame, her independence, even her beauty. So when Kirk—powerful, rich and handsome—came on to her with wry certainty and assurance, she’d found it intriguing. By the time he’d asked her to move in with him, she’d been head over heels in love.
Annie had told her, straight out, that she was making a mistake.
“Move in with him?” she’d said. “What ever happened to, ‘Marry me?’”
“He’s cautious,” Laurel had replied, in her lover’s defense, “and why wouldn’t he be? Marriage is a tough deal for a man like that.”
“It’s a tough deal for anybody,” Annie had said wryly. “Still, if he loves you and you love him...”
“Annie, I’m thirty-two. I’m old enough to live with a man without the world coming to an end. Besides, I don’t want to rush into anything, any more than Kirk does.”
“Uh-huh,” Annie had said, in a way that made it clear she knew Laurel was lying. And she was. She’d have married Kirk in a second, if he’d asked. And he would ask, given time. She’d been certain of that.
“Laurel?”
Laurel blinked, George was looking at her, his brows raised. “Hand me that other wrench, will you? The one with the black handle.”
So she had moved in with Kirk, more or less, though she’d held on to her apartment. It had been his suggestion. He’d even offered to pay her rent, though she had refused. If she kept her apartment, he’d said, she’d have a place to stay when she had shoots or showings in the city because he lived thirty miles out, in a sprawling mansion on Long Island’s North Shore.
“Bull,” Annie had snorted. “The guy’s a zillionaire. How come he doesn’t have an apartment in the city?”
“Annie,” Laurel had said patiently, “you don’t understand. He needs the peace and quiet of the Long Island house.”
In the end, it had turned out that he did have a Manhattan apartment. Laurel closed her eyes against the rush of painful memories. She’d learned about it by accident, fielding a phone call from a foolishly indiscreet building manager who’d wanted to check with Mr. Soames about a convenient time for some sort of repair to the terrace.
Puzzled, telling herself it was some sort of mistake or perhaps a surprise for her, Laurel had gone to the East side address and managed to slip inside when the doorman wasn’t looking. She’d ridden the elevator to the twentieth floor, taken a deep breath and rung the bell of Apartment 2004.
Kirk had opened the door, dressed in a white terry-cloth robe. His face paled when he saw her but she had to give him credit; he recovered quickly.
“What are you doing here, Laurel?”
Before she could reply, a sultry voice called, “Kirk? Where are you, lover?” and a porcelain-skinned blonde wearing a matching robe and the flushed look that came of a long afternoon in bed, appeared behind him.
Laurel hadn’t said a word. She hadn’t even returned to the Long Island house for her things. And when the story got out, as it was bound to do, the people who knew her sighed and said well, it was sad but they’d have sworn Kirk had changed, that once he’d asked her to move into that big house on the water they’d all figured it meant he’d finally decided to settle down...
“You got a bad diverter valve,” George muttered, “but I’ve almost got it under control. Takes time, that’s all.”
Laurel gave him an absent smile. Everything took time. It had taken her months to get over the pain of Kirk’s betrayal but once she had, she’d begun thinking about their affair with the cold, clear logic of hindsight and she’d found herself wondering what she’d ever found attractive about a man like that to begin with.
She’d mistaken his arrogance for self-assurance, his egotism for determination. She, who’d always prided herself on her control, had been stupidly taken in by sexual chemistry, and the truth was that not even that had really lived up to its promise. She’d never felt swept away by passion in Kirk’s arms.
But Damian’s kiss had done that. It had filled her with fire, and with a longing so hot and sweet it had threatened to destroy her.
The tools Laurel was holding fell from her suddenly nerveless fingers and clattered on the tile floor.
“You okay?” George said, glancing over at her.
“Sure,” she said quickly, and she bent down and scooped up the tools.
Damian Skouras was not for her. He was nothing but an updated copy of Kirk, right down to the sexy blonde pouting in the background at the wedding.
“Gimme the screwdriver, Laurel,” George said. “No, not the Phillips head. The other one.”
Had the man really thought she wouldn’t notice the blonde? Or didn’t he think it mattered?
“Egotistical bastard,” she muttered, slapping the screwdriver into George’s outstretched hand.
“Hey, what’d I do?”
Laurel blinked. George was looking at her as if she’d lost her mind.
“Oh,” she said, and flushed bright pink. “George, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean you.”
He gave her the boyish grin that kept American women glued to their TV sets from two to three every weekday afternoon.
“Glad to hear it. From the look on your face, I’d bate to be whoever it is you’re thinking about”
She’d never been able to bring herself to tell Annie the truth of her breakup with Kirk, not because Annie might have said, “I told you so,” but because the pain had been too sharp.
“You were right” was all she’d told her sister, “Kirk wasn’t for me.”
Maybe I should have told her, Laurel thought grimly. Maybe, if I had, Annie and Dawn and everybody else at that wedding would have known Damian Skouras for the belly-to-the-ground snake he was.
“Got it,” George said in triumph. He handed her the screwdriver and flipped the selector lever up and down. “Just you watch. Soon as I get out of the tub and turn this baby on—”
“Just be careful,” Laurel said. “Watch out for that puddle of water in the...”
Too late. George yelped, lost his footing and made a grab for the first thing that was handy. It was the on-off knob. Water came pouring out of the shower head.
“Damn,” he shouted, and leaped back, but it was too late. He was soaked, and so was Laurel. Half the icy spray had shot in her direction. Sputtering, George pushed the knob back in, shut off the water and flung his dripping hair back from his eyes. He looked down at himself, then eyed Laurel. “Well.” he said wryly, “at least we know it works.”
Laurel burst out laughing.
“Susie’s going to think I tried to drown you,” she said, tossing him a towel and dabbing at herself with another.
George yanked his soaked sweatshirt over his head and stepped out of the tub. His sneakers squished as he walked across the tile floor of the old-fashioned bathroom.
“I guess you’ll have to phone old man Grissom,” he said with a sheepish smile. “Tell him that valve’s just about shot and he’d better send a plumber around to take a look.”
“First thing in the morning,” Laurel said, nodding. She mopped her face and hair, then hung the towel over the rack. “I’m just sorry you got drenched.”
“No problem. Glad to help out.” George draped his arm loosely around Laurel’s shoulders. Together, they sauntered down the hall toward the front door. “As for the soaking—I was planning on entering a wet jeans contest anyway.”
Laurel grinned, leaned back against the wall and crossed her arms.
“Uh-huh.”
“Hey, they have wet T-shirt contests for women, right?” he said impishly as he reached for the doorknob. “Well, why not wet jeans contests for guys?” Grinning, he opened the door. “Anyhow, you know what they used to say. Save water, shower with a friend.”
“Indeed,” a voice said coldly.
Damian Skouras was standing in the doorway. He was dressed in a dark suit and a white shirt; his tie was a deep scarlet silk, and his face was twisted in a scowl.
Laurel’s throat constricted. She’d been kidding herself. The man wasn’t a copy of anybody, not when it came to looks. Kirk had been handsome but the only word that described Damian was the one she’d come up with this morning.
He was gorgeous.
He was also uninvited. And unwelcome. Definitely unwelcome, she reminded herself, and she stepped away from the wall, drew herself up to her full height and matched his scowl with one of her own.
“What,” she asked coldly, “are you doing here?” Damian ignored the question. He was too busy trying to figure out what in hell was going on.
What do you think is going on you idiot? he asked himself, and his frown deepened.
Laurel was wearing a soaked T-shirt that clung to her like a second skin. Beneath it, her rounded breasts and nipples stood out in exciting relief. She had on a pair of faded denim shorts, her feet were bare, her hair was wet and her
face was shiny and free of makeup.
She was more beautiful than ever.
“Laurel? You know this guy?”
Damian turned his head and looked at the man standing beside her. Actually he wasn’t standing beside her anymore. He’d moved slightly in front of her, in a defensive posture that made it clear he was ready to protect Laurel at all costs. Damian’s lip curled. What would a woman see in a man like this? He was good-looking; women would think so, anyway, though he had too pretty a face for all the muscles that rippled in his bare chest and shoulders. Damian’s gaze swept down the man’s body. His jeans were tight and wet, and cupped him with revealing intimacy.
What the hell had been going on here? Laurel and the
Bozo looked as if they’d just come in out of the rain.
Unfortunately, it hadn’t rained in days.
He thought of what the guy had said about showering with a friend. It was, he knew, a joke. Besides, people didn’t shower with their clothing on. Logic told him that, the same as it told him that they didn’t climb out of bed wet from head to toe, but what the hell did logic have to do with anything?
Coming here, unannounced, had seemed such a clever idea. Catch her by surprise, have the limousine waiting downstairs with a chilled bottle of champagne in the builtin bar, long-stemmed roses in a crystal vase and reservations at that restaurant that had just opened with the incredible view of the city.
It hadn’t occurred to him that just because the telephone directory listed an L. Bennett at this address was no guarantee that she lived alone.
“Laurel?”
The Bozo was talking to Laurel again but he hadn’t taken his eyes off him.
“What’s the deal? Do you know this guy?”
“Of course she knows me,” Damian snapped.
“Is that right, Laurel?”
She nodded with obvious reluctance. “I know him. But I didn’t invite him here.”
The Bozo folded his arms over his chest. “She knows you,” he said to Damian, “but she didn’t invite you here.”
“I don’t know how to break this to you, mister...?”
“Morgan,” George said. “Grey Morgan.”
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